


Inductive

by Names



Category: Crosstalk - Connie Willis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-28 02:55:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17174513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Names/pseuds/Names
Summary: A little prequel/postquel fic, because I wasn’t quite ready to leave Briddey and C.B.





	Inductive

**_Before._ **

 

Of course I wanted her before it started. All bossy and pissed in the echoing Commspan corridor, with her thoughts three steps ahead but her voice even and focused. “All right then, so we’ll get Worth and the camera guys in the same room, go through the analysis, and nail down the milestones. Thursday. I’ll have Charla find a time.”  _ And then I’ll pad that schedule out by two weeks at least because Worth is involved, but at least we’ll have something to work from so we can bring the UX people in.  _ The plan was clear and bright and evolving in her mind, even before any of it happened, twirling out possibilities and what-ifs, making connections. 

I turned the corner and had a face for the voice - bright eyes, bright hair, sharp cheekbones. Looking away fast would have been suspicious - a thief caught casing the joint. I kept my best vague abstracted gaze and slid right by her, and she did the same to me --  _ who’s that, new hire maybe? There was a batch last week. Which reminds me I should make sure we’ve still got two of them allocated for the new project team -  _ and she’s off again.

I wasn’t new, of course. It was the first time I’d been aboveground at Commspan in weeks and frankly I was regretting it already, running low on resistance. But the first-round factory prototypes had never made it out of the mailroom, and I wanted a chance to veto the worst of the design mistakes before it was too late. So here I was putting real voices to the nebulous ones, and pretty faces to the voices, and now I’d know her every time I heard her passing thoughts. Fine.  _ Fine _ . 

She didn’t forget, though, and she must have looked me up or asked someone. On Thursday I was fishing through signals trying to spot whether the partner team really had flown in from China and what I’d need to do to avoid them, and I heard my name flick across her thoughts with recognition.  _ If the SelfieConnect design is C.B. Schwartz’s idea why didn’t Worth want him in the meeting?  _

Because Worth wanted the credit and because I definitely didn’t, of course. It was my idea, and I hated it - on-the-fly analysis of your face in the front camera, machine learning and microexpressions to capture the precise moment of the most expressive possible selfie to share - and it was definitely going to sell if this year’s hardware was up to the real-time processing required. Marketing would put it out as a way to capture your most authentic self, but obviously it was actually just a better way to lie in pictures. 

She’d said it aloud, it turns out, wherever she was, because now she was listening to somebody answer -  _ Oh, Schwartz never goes to meetings, I don’t know how he gets away with it. But honestly if we’re pitching the product, I don’t think we want him there anyways. I can’t sell a concept about looking good with the Hunchback there.  _

I tuned out fast. Who needs to hear all that again?

 

I heard her catch sight of me in the lobby on my way to the parking lot, and because I’m a sucker, I didn’t dodge. She called my name, twice and I was sure I’d heard it aloud the second time, so I turned. “I want you in the partner meeting tomorrow, C.B.,” she said. 

“You don’t need me,” I said, “Worth’s got all the details. It’s really his project now.” And good riddance.

“It was your idea, you ought to be there. We’d want your perspective,” she said firmly.  _ And Worth shouldn’t get to act like he’s the patron saint of every project this department starts.  _ Which explained it. But she went on, “I asked around about you. You had a hand in nearly every one of last year’s banner features, and somehow no one person knows all of it. How’d you manage that in an office like this?” 

Only half joking there too, with a wash of longing behind it, for peace, for privacy. Something we had in common after all. I smiled a little and said, “You’ve just got to keep them distracted with something better. No big deal. But what idea of  _ yours _ did Worth take over?” Because here’s the magic trick: everyone is always thinking about themselves, and it follows that everyone always wants to talk about themselves. 

_ Hmmm _ , she thought, but she let me change the subject, and I’d guessed right. “Kitchen Sync, last year. But I’m program management, I’m not supposed to be the idea person anyways.” It echoed in her head as she said it, in someone else’s tones, and it clearly still stung.

“Everyone’s got ideas, not just people who have it in the job description,” I said. “Granted, most ideas are bad. That one did pretty well though, didn’t it?”

“Could’ve been better,” she said. “The family bulletin board and calendar management went off well, but we could have done better on the privacy side.”  _ Maeve certainly thinks so, _ she thought, with sympathy --  _ oh no, Maeve! _ She checked her watch. “I’m late --” 

I waved her off and turned away. She wasn’t so bad, for Commspan. 

 

I didn’t go to the meeting, of course, but I sent her a note with a follow-on idea I’d been hoarding for a rainy day and I hoped that she’d catch Worth flat-footed with it; she found the connections, spun it into her planning, made it look obvious and easy, which is the hardest thing of all. Caught the whole crowd’s attention, all right, for better or worse.

She kept early hours, so some days when I was late in lab, caught up in work and the quiet of the night, hers were the first thoughts echoing through in the building. If you had to talk to someone, she was an all right choice. When she listened, she wasn’t thinking about the reactions she’d get from whoever she told next. So I talked to her. 

Of course I wanted her. Of course I thought about her. But I knew better.

It’s like the saying about working in a sausage factory -- once you know too much about what’s on the inside of relationships, how they’re made, they stop being appetizing. What people think of each other. What they think of you. Even if you’ve been working deliberately to make sure they don’t think much of you, if they even think of you at all.

I was thirteen when the voices came. Ever since I was a kid I’ve only seen couples flayed, insides exposed. Like x-ray vision you can’t turn off. Turns out seeing everyone naked gets old pretty fast, even when you’re a thirteen-year-old boy. 

I’ve watched a lot of nice people forgive jerks, gifting second chances, believing, thinking  _ But I think he’s really matured and grown, he’s so generous and kind to me now. He wouldn’t do that again. He understands. It’ll be different this time. _ And you hear the jerks think --- well, not so generous thoughts, let’s say. And there’s not a thing you can do but listen, and think  _ it won’t be different this time, it’s never different for anyone. _

 

None of that’s why I helped her. I helped her because this is a damn affliction that nobody should go through alone. I’ve got my share of flaws but at least I can honestly say this for myself: I would do that for anyone.  

And yes, I helped her because I needed her to guard my secret - our secret. I helped her because her niece needed her, because her family needed her. I helped her because I wanted her in one piece, safe, because it was better to think of her eventually sleeping sound in that asshole’s apartment than her in a psych ward. 

But I definitely won’t complain about how it turned out --

  
  


**_After._ **

 

I’ve been trying damn hard not to let this little snag cross my mind, but after she slides her thumbs in the waistband of my jeans to work them off my hips, hands hot against my skin, the edge of her nail skidding intermittently down -- I'm soaking in the novel sensations and I can’t help but think  _ if this is what being stripped feels like then I never want to take my own clothes off again.  _

_ No one’s ever -- you haven’t ever --  _  she thinks, and we’re so damn close right now, skin to skin and mind to mind, that I get the shock before she controls it, despite how amazing her reflexes have grown to be, and I know I’m not going to be able to cover for this. 

Here’s the thing, I’d always known I couldn’t be with someone normal, I mean in a long-term way. How close to someone can you be with something this huge between you? Arms-length is easy at scale: let them think you’re a little nuts and they do all the work for you. And meanwhile casual intimacy runs on lies: say yes when you mean meh, say baby when you mean I forgot your name, say I want you when you mean I want an escape. I’ve stretched the truth on this plenty but I can’t now.  _ Of course I haven’t. Ever. Any of it.  _ Real mood-killer. Forget it. 

She’s moved, though, changeable, she’s done with surprise and she’s not appalled - or worse, amused - but... eager. Anticipatory. Magnanimous. Ready to teach.

And it’s easy with her, in a way that I’d never expected. She takes my hand and draws it to her, running a gentle stroke along herself, and the edge of self-consciousness she’s tamping down is interrupted with a burst of sensation that crashes down on me too. The experimentalist in me says  _ let’s try that again for science _ and I run my hand backwards to have another go but the reverse is even better and we’re both sucking in breath. The results reproduce. So to speak. And again and every time it’s more.  _ Yes - yes - yes --- _

In a moment her thoughts are skating by,  _ hot - mmm - ooh too hot - dry - lube? or would he ---  _ and fuck yes I would, no I never have before but I slide down and duck my head before she decides whether to ask. I put my tongue where our fingers were and groan aloud at her response and feel the sound vibrate. It’s unbelievable. It’s beyond words. I’m locked in to her signal exclusively and absolutely. Every time she rises higher I try to do it again, whatever it was that made that sweetness, and sometimes I succeed and sometimes I stumble into something even better. We’re both humming with it, desperate, an out-of-control positive feedback loop, and when she comes I know it in the very base of my brain and I come too, swept on her wave, flooded and nearly untouched.

My ears are rushing in the aftermath, as if when I put my ear to the conch it drew my whole self in. It’s long minutes before I come back to myself, still washed in her love and delight. Which is nearly enough to fend off my embarrassment at the spill on her legs and the sheets. 

_ It’s not always like that,  _ she says drowsily, thinking about the past, thinking about faking it, thinking about how she wouldn’t have asked aloud for me to do that, not the first time, not my first time, maybe not ever out loud. Thinking  _ he was incredible _ . And even if I had an unfair edge on the competition I’ll take that compliment.

And she’s thinking very specifically about returning the favor -  _ oh - _ and feeling all open and hot again now, and I shudder with eagerness and exhaustion. She feels it and thinks -  _ what would that be like? What if --  _ I hear her assembling in her mind a memory of the sensations of some past act, her mouth wide and working, running duplex against an instant replay of my hair brushing her thigh and my tongue in her, my mind catching her pleasure and echoing it back to her, working them together into a full-color pornographic jigsaw. 

I can feel vividly her body revving up again while mine is still caught in its fucking male refractory period. The paradox is borderline uncomfortable. 

She’s up on one elbow looking at me, and for the first time in a long while I’m not hiding a thing.  _ You’re gorgeous, amazing, I want you, let me try to keep up with you, love.  _ And her smile softens a little, and her thoughts go from burning-hot to hearth-warm, and she comes close and echoes it all back to me, and I have to believe it.


End file.
